Dallas Police Chief David Brown on Friday announced what he called new policies and directives in response to a wave this year of 16 shootings involving officers, including eight fatalities and one that nearly set off a riot last month.

The initiatives include requiring written or recorded proof for consensual searches, mandatory Taser training for all officers, a foot pursuit policy and more detailed documentation of cases in which officers fight back against resisting suspects.

At least some of the eight items Brown outlined in a written statement had already existed in some form for years. Some appear to be enhancements of existing practices, though department officials would not specify how, when or what improvements would be made.

It’s unclear who, if anyone, Brown consulted in devising his list, which his statement said “will positively impact officer safety and improve public trust and confidence.”

Lt. Scott Walton, a department spokesman, refused to answer questions. He said Brown would not be available to talk about the policies until at least Monday evening.

“These are general ideas of future possible policies,” said Ron Pinkston, president of the Dallas Police Association. “Some of them we already do. These are generalizations. … They’re just looking at things.”

The announcement comes weeks after the fatal police shooting in South Dallas of 31-year-old suspected drug dealer James Harper. After a foot chase, Officer Brian Rowden shot Harper during a fight in which Rowden said he saw Harper reaching in his pocket and feared for his life. Harper was found to be unarmed.

The shooting nearly set off a riot that night in the Dixon Circle neighborhood, which has long been plagued by drugs and violence. It was the most recent fatal shooting during a year in which the city is on pace to see the most police-involved shootings in at least a decade, even as the crime rate reportedly continues to fall.

There were 15 officer-involved shootings in 2009, 16 in 2010 and 12 in 2011, according to department statistics.

The directives

Other policies and directives Brown outlined include:

Formalizing a process in which the FBI Civil Rights Division reviews all officer-involved shootings. The FBI has been called in for select cases.

Reimplement a team to review police in-car camera videos, a step the chief had previously said he planned to take. Brown had temporarily suspended the program amid officer complaints that it was overly focused on minor infractions.

Assign a special community police team to focus on crime and other problems in the Dixon Circle neighborhood, where Harper was shot. Neighborhood police officers throughout the city have had similar goals for years.

Research national best practices related to major incidents and institutional failures, which police officials are already known to do almost daily.

Brown also vowed to revisit one of the darkest periods in department history, following the 1986 fatal police shooting of 70-year-old Etta Collins, who was black, by a white officer. He promised to review recommendations that came out of congressional hearings following that shooting.

Experts and community leaders and activists praised the underlying tenets of Brown’s list. Some said that many of the policies ought to have been in place by now.

Warding off trouble

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist and an expert on police use of force, said it appears the chief is cognizant of other major city police departments that were placed under federal consent decrees after scandals in recent years.

“He’s ramping up all these different tactics to avoid that,” Alpert said. “This really sounds like an ambitious update to their accountability system. … A lot of that stuff they should have been doing before.”

For example, many other major police departments already have a separate report to document police use of force. Dallas officers currently only document the use of a Taser and pepper balls on special forms. Other types of force are typically documented within an officer’s arrest report, which makes it more difficult to track and quantify.

“They were behind the curve on use of force reporting,” Alpert said.

Longtime community activist Marvin Crenshaw, who lives in South Dallas, said some have long called for similar steps.

“The central question to me is this: When an officer violates all of those new policies that he’s talking about … what will the Police Department do?” Crenshaw said.

Officers lukewarm

The response to Brown’s announcements among officers was lukewarm.

Dallas Latino Peace Officers Association President George Aranda said that while FBI oversight is called for in some cases, Brown’s apparent plan to do so in all shootings “seems redundant and almost questions the validity of our own department’s investigative units.”

A foot chase policy could restrict officers too severely, Aranda said in an email. Though there is no official policy, officers have been trained on guidelines for foot pursuits for years.

“I hope that these policies are implemented for officer safety and supporting officers and telling the community enough is enough in regards to the criminal element instead of protecting criminals that deserve to be incarcerated,” Aranda said.

Pinkston, who represents the largest officers’ union, said he was not consulted on the chief’s plans.

“There’s no meat to it, so why would you have to tell me in advance?” Pinkston said.

The way the communication was handled created confusion for some police officers, Pinkston said.

“You see some officers are already complaining about the new foot pursuit policy. There isn’t one,” Pinkston said. “I don’t understand the strategy of releasing it at 3:30 on Friday.”

sgoldstein@dallasnews.com; teiserer@dallasnews.com

Follow Scott Goldstein on Twitter at @dallascrime and Tanya Eiserer at @tanyaeiserer.